Bill Bryson: the British are less 'orderly and well-behaved' than they used to be

Britain has become a less polite society but does not yet do greed and selfishness as well as America, author Bill Bryson has said.

The bestselling travel writer, who is originally from Iowa, said the British people are becoming more like people in the US, except they “haven’t quite mastered it yet”.

Britain used to be a much more orderly and well-behaved societyBill Bryson

Best known for his 1995 UK travelogue, Notes from a Small Island, Bryson said he believed Britain had become a less orderly society and branded the EU referendum a “completely emotional event, not an intellectual one”.

“It kind of reminded me of when the Channel Tunnel was being built,” he told The Times.

“A lot of people felt uncomfortable having a physical link with the continent, as if Germans of even the French might invade through the tunnel.

“It was clearly an irrational feeling of losing a sense of being an island and separate.”

Bryson, who published a sequel travelogue in January, The Road to Little Dribbling, said people in the UK lived richer, more comfortable lives than they did 20 years ago, and that London had developed better than any other big city in the world.

He believes courtesy levels have fallen, however.

“Britain used to be a much more orderly and well-behaved society,” he told The Times.

“Now the British have become more greedy and selfish, more like the American model, except they haven’t quite mastered it yet.”